Take the Johns Hopkins Memory Test

How does motion affect memory?

When is the last time you put your mind to the ultimate test: a game of memory match cards with a toddler? Your results may range from triumphant to humbling depending on the child and if you’ve had coffee yet, but in the end it’s a child’s game. It’s static and slow. What would happen if we sped it up a bit and added a little motion into the mix?

How did you do? If your results mirrored those of Johns Hopkins cognitive psychologists, your recall should have been better for objects that popped out twice from the same side of the screen, and worse for those that popped out once from each side. The hypothesis here is that human memory is built upon “core knowledge” of the physics of how objects move through space. An image popping out from the same side twice appears to be a single object, while the image popping out from both sides behaves as multiple objects might. Our brains seem to remember single moving objects better. In fact, in a recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, scientists found people had nearly 20 percent better recall of objects that moved through space the way we would predict a single object would.

Alas, no word on whether setting memory match cards on moving Matchbox cars will help you secure victory in memory match over your niece or nephew. But there is a way to find out.